Broken Blade (Break Blade)

[Kraco]

A lot better episode than the previous one. Not that I'd remember much of it anymore, but reading the old posts sure revealed it had major problems. This one was mostly good, having only minor poor details, like Cleo alone defeating so many enemy suits, which, on the other hand, did nothing but stand around waiting to get disposed of. Somebody should seriously teach these soldiers a thing or two about warfare.

I was especially pleased by the fact I didn't hate Rygart anymore. Sure, he still doesn't kick ass, but at least he went out to fight willingly, even if he wasn't really out for blood. He needs a railgun, though.

[David75]

A lot better episode than the previous one. Not that I'd remember much of it anymore, but reading the old posts sure revealed it had major problems. This one was mostly good, having only minor poor details, like Cleo alone defeating so many enemy suits, which, on the other hand, did nothing but stand around waiting to get disposed of. Somebody should seriously teach these soldiers a thing or two about warfare.

I was especially pleased by the fact I didn't hate Rygart anymore. Sure, he still doesn't kick ass, but at least he went out to fight willingly, even if he wasn't really out for blood. He needs a railgun, though.

Well, we have to remember those yellow mechs have very high manoeuvrability and speed capacities, so much that only a very small number of people are able to just operate them. And Cleo is high above the best tier of people able to use those mechs. When you see her move at "normal" speed, the others are in fact in slow motion. Or I should write they are at normal speed and she's just in Fast Forward mode.
This has been shown a lot in previous eps, suprise+speed enable this very small team to eradicate lots of enemies like tigers attacking sheep.

You have to take into account the fact she has had the upper hand on Rygart and even was able to beat him hard even with the failsafes... that were enough till now.

And yes, Rigart has had to evolve and become a tainted adult/warior and will have to go further down that slope.
I liked how they choose a very simple, yet effective approach for his attack. I also like that nothing works 100% right at first atempt
and they all have to deal with compromises.
I liked that Cleo, like Rygart and Zess also meet the impossible. Cleo against the General and his experience, Zess agains Rygart, Rygart against Cleo.

[Inazuma]

It was good though I can't see where this all goes with Cleo as a prisoner. Is she going to slowly warm up to her captors or is she going to serve as a reason for Zess to go Berserk when he wakes up

[Kraco]

Rygart only lost his chances againt Cleo because he for some unfathomable reason judged the whole battle was over once he disabled Zess's mecha. Instead of shifting his attention to the remaining enemies, like any real soldier would have done, he just decided to stop there to stare at the wreckage. If he doesn't get rid of ridiculous and extremely dangerous habits like that, he won't ever be much of a spearhead - at least beyond an expendable one.

[Idealistic]

I completely forgot Cleo was only 12. And I thought her body was just a coincidence, but I guess even Rygart sees things the same as us!

[Buffalobiian]

I completely forgot Cleo was only 12. And I thought her body was just a coincidence, but I guess even Rygart sees things the same as us!

That was a hilarious reaction from him.. of all things to think of a captured soldier.

I'm not sure I like the current Rygart, but it's definitely different from your normal hero's learning curve that involves coming to grips with the morals of battle and not just the techniques. So he believes he killed Lee last time, but not the guy who saved him.. I'm really not sure if this is just his dishonest lying again..

It does piss me off a bit that Rygart's getting his ass saved by autopilot though. Everybody else learns by falling down. Ah well, guess it's a perk that comes with the mech.. :S

The new enemy mechs better not lose their badassery once they strip their cloak. That'd be a shame. At least Sigyn doesn't.

[KrayZ33]

I'm not sure I like the current Rygart, but it's definitely different from your normal hero's learning curve that involves coming to grips with the morals of battle and not just the techniques. So he believes he killed Lee last time, but not the guy who saved him.. I'm really not sure if this is just his dishonest lying again..

the current Rygart is probably the best MC possible.
he understood that its not possible to save everyone (especially to spare your enemies) and he has to kill.. of course he has problems finishing off his childhood friend but thats fine, he realized that it's totally stupid not to fight seriously if he's up against one of the best pilots he can think of, thus he really went for him and was lucky enough to stop his "rage" at the right moment, but the way they showed it made it seem like it was more luck and not planned at all.. thats a cool thing

also, its clearly visible that he doesn't like killing but he tries to "override" his fears and doubts by talking to himself constantly and assuring himself that it can't be helped (more or less) just like any soldier (in the real world too) would do.

what I want to say is that he is not like the typical gundam seed pilot who is like "I DON'T WANT TO KILL YOU, PLEASE DROP YOUR WEAPONS"right before he slashes through thousands of mechs and families. he was like that during the first 2 episodes and I hated it.

at the moment I really believe that his survior instinct is greater than his will for peace and that he has to play those "mindgames" with himself to keep him from suffering serious mental damage
thats why I think he *knows* that he killed Dan more or less, he said so himself ("I killed 2 people already") but when he is fighting someone he can't admit it anymore because if he did he wouldn't be able to keep going.

edit: mah its kinda hard for me to explain what I meant.

It does piss me off a bit that Rygart's getting his ass saved by autopilot though. Everybody else learns by falling down. Ah well, guess it's a perk that comes with the mech.. :S

I like it. it's more believable this way. Of course, it makes him a prodigy nonetheless(more or less), but its neither 100% *his* doing nor is it 100% the machines doing that way... and the way he canceled that autopilot move was really awesome

[Ryllharu]

I like it. it's more believable this way. Of course, it makes him a prodigy nonetheless(more or less), but its neither 100% *his* doing nor is it 100% the machines doing that way... and the way he canceled that autopilot move was really awesome

Same here. But it doesn't make him a prodigy at all, quite the opposite.

Cleo is the prodigy. Especially considering her young age, when she gets the willpower to do it, she is a beast. Possibly right behind Zess in terms of skill. She admitted she's not skilled or calm enough to handle delicate operations like saving Zess, but she can push a golem to its limits and is tactically minded enough to cause a great deal of chaos. They said last episode that it took most of their group over month (Zess a week) to learn how to consistently operate their new, complicated golems. Cleo took a day. We will see how this new red-haired guy compares.

Rygart is an idiot. He was using barely 3% of the black golem's skill in the first episode, and not a whole hell of a lot has changed. He only accidentally turned off the stability control. If he learned to use the foot pedals, he could leave it off most of the time, and gain substantial maneuverability. That black golem could utterly annihilate anything or anyone if used to full capacity. If Narvi, Zess, Cleo, the generals or even this new red-haired guy could use it, they could win each skirmish of the war singlehandedly, limited only by the operational time of the unit.

I like that he's incompetent. What other outcome could you expect from someone using ancient technology where the control systems manual has to be reverse-engineered by the smartest person in the kingdom (Sigyn), piloted by a person who has literally no concept of how the world's technology operates, and who has never used anything beyond simple machines and hand tools?

[NeoCybercoin]

I thought it was badass the way he just bulldozered through that other guy

[Buffalobiian]

I thought it was badass the way he just bulldozered through that other guy

I thought his solution to "capturing enemies" at first was to bulldoze their legs and leave the body intact. I was so sure of that that it took a little while for it to sink in that he actually demolished that guy.

[KrayZ33]

But it doesn't make him a prodigy at all,

piloted by a person who has literally no concept of how the world's technology operates, and who has never used anything beyond simple machines and hand tools?

thats why I think he's a prodigy but the words "natural born skiller" or something like that might fit better
he's able to fight a battle with this thing even though he never used something like that before if I'm not mistaken

its not like they gave him a gun and all he has to do is to pull the trigger.
judged by the grunts each episodes who are barely able to do anything special at all it must be kinda difficult to control a Golem.

[Ryllharu]

its not like they gave him a gun and all he has to do is to pull the trigger.
judged by the grunts each episodes who are barely able to do anything special at all it must be kinda difficult to control a Golem.

That's exactly what it is like. He's given a gun (a weapon that takes most of the skill out of killing, point and shoot) and is told to pull the trigger (which by the way, is largely the sum of what he does in the cockpit).

The black golem is doing almost all the work. Normal soldiers have to worry about balance, orientation, and speed, etc. It is by no means a simple feat. He just hops aboard and the on-board systems are doing most of the hard work. He's just pointing it where to go, and opening and closing its hands. You're doing a good job at proving my point.

[shinta|hikari]

The fact that Rygart is the only person able to pilot the ancient mech already makes him a prodigy. Just being able to do that, after all, is already exceptional to the point of disbelief in their world.

[David75]

The fact that Rygart is the only person able to pilot the ancient mech already makes him a prodigy. Just being able to do that, after all, is already exceptional to the point of disbelief in their world.

Yup,
But I wish they could place a camcorder inside the cockpit to witness how bad he is... They could also get lots of inputs to be analysed, discussed and beaten into the rookie

[KrayZ33]

That's exactly what it is like. He's given a gun (a weapon that takes most of the skill out of killing, point and shoot) and is told to pull the trigger (which by the way, is largely the sum of what he does in the cockpit).

thats like saying modern pilots don't need training and have to keep the machine steady because there are things and mechanisms like flight assistants and such

in episode 1 during his first fight you could clearly see how he learned to move and control that thing on the fly, grabbing a weapon, moving around
you make it sound like he's playing a computer game
where you press the "Q" key and your unit makes a three strike combo with a leap attack

Normal soldiers have to worry about balance, orientation, and speed, etc.

is that so? how do we know
their machines could have limiters which prevent the golem from overreacting and what not too

[Kraco]

where you press the "Q" key and your unit makes a three strike combo with a leap attack

Surely you aren't implying you are one of those lousy players who script macros, Kray..?

Anyway, I'm going to agree with Ryll half-way here. Everything we have seen suggests the mecha was built and programmed so that it would forgive quite green pilots. Perhaps back when it was built they had no choice (too young soldiers kept dying too early, or something) or they did it because they could. It's useless to compare it to planes of our times, though, because no fighter has been even attempted to be built so that it would overly much interfere with the highly trained pilots only allowed to fly them. Though apparently some fighter accidents have been caused by the pilot not fully understanding the computer controlled avionics when performing risky stunts. Still, we already have UAVs and cruise missiles that are only told the route or target and the computer handles the rest - much better than any human could. Targeting systems in any modern military vehicles have long been relying on computers as well.

If the people of the past had the know-how to build mechas like that, they would have zero reason not to implement highly advanced AI to aid the pilot, as long as the pilot is able to control how much aid he's receiving to suit his needs and tastes.

I also highly doubt the chunks of quartz the regular mechas are contain too advanced aiding systems. Limiters at best.

[einbreaker]

At the same time I don'r recall any of the other pilots pushing more than a button, or turning a dial, so I'd hold my reservations on any of them being more or less skilled than Rygart. I mean it's essentially apples and oranges, they are two completely different systems that work try to accomplish the same goal.

Or a stronger point would probably be that everyone is using magic except for Rygart, give him a break.

[Buffalobiian]

At the same time I don'r recall any of the other pilots pushing more than a button, or turning a dial, so I'd hold my reservations on any of them being more or less skilled than Rygart.

That's due to the nature of the quartz machines themselves. You put your hand on the piloting orb, it glows, and you control it telepathically, rather than mechanically.

Rygart's oldschool mech is the only one in the series that uses pedals, levers and throttles.

That being the case, it comes to say that fine movement is much more readily possible with the current quartz mechs, making autopilot somewhat less important compared to training. Unless Rygart's mech has gloves, fine movement of each finger should be impossible, technically speaking.

That said, it seems that amongst all the quartz and silicon modern technology, "computers" haven't shown any emergence at all - and therefore no autopilot.

[Kraco]

Episode 4 720p | 1080p - gg





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Quite a nice ep indeed. Lots of action, even if most of it made the Krisna generals look pitiful. The new psycho dude is very interesting and potentially the best pilot so far - when the conditions are met. Being a psycho, he's not very well suited for coordinated military tactics, though. That much was unquestionably shown in this episode. If Narvi is intelligent enough as the unit commander, she will let Girghe terrorise enemies on his own. I feel like Rygart is getting the hang of his balls (the jokes were good) and I didn't anymore think he sucked during this ep. He's still convincing himself he needs to become a killer, but that's infinitely better than going around trying not to kill enemies following some unrealistic pacifist idea ill suited for a battlefield.

I'd prefer the larger battles to be more intelligent on both sides and the day not saved by miracle rescues by the main characters - more realistically war like, that is. Although I'd have nothing against surprising strategies, as long as they are believable, which Baldr allowing the rush attack into the obvious trap was not. Stunts by individuals could be saved for the kind of fights Girghe now initiated.

Sigyn continues to be damn cute.

[Buffalobiian]

Being a psycho, he's not very well suited for coordinated military tactics, though.

Borcuse seemed to be the best of both worlds, though the inner psychosis was probably suppressed to allow the military commander to function as one. Perhaps the release of his inner demon would be what leads him to screw up on the command front.

If Narvi is intelligent enough as the unit commander, she will let Girghe terrorise enemies on his own.

It's a matter of trust too. If I were her, I'd flat out trying to watch my front and back at the same time.

Hot general dying's a pity. Real pity. I could do with a mature woman to balance all this out, even if Sigyn by herself would suffice 100%.

Where the hell were they hiding the sniper guy from the Millennium Corps this whole time? I'm pretty sure he would even outsnipe Zess.


All in all, pretty insane ep.